Spring has finally arrived!  The crocus popped their little heads out of the ground today, while the sun was shining, the birds chirping, and the cats basking in the sunny warmth!
Yay!

A food photo critique.

    I stumbled upon an interesting photography site the other day.  I was on Pinterest, and saw a pin that said something like, '30 best photography blogs'.  So I went through and was looking at many of them.  I saw several quite interesting sites, and many beautiful photos.  Well, I love food photography, so when I saw that you could submit a photo to be critiqued I was very excited!
    So I went through my project 365 from last year, and chose a few favorite food photos from last year.  Now, I was trying to think objectively, and think how other people would view my photos.  Its hard though, because each photo is connected with so many memories for me.  Project 365 was a hard challenge to tackle, but now that its done, it brings back so many good memories of the different days, weeks, and months of 2012.
   Anyway, I think I will submit this photo.  These are chocolate peanut butter pretzel bars.  They were very delish!

Brown butter cookies.
Well, I saw a super cool recipe on Pinterest, and actually decided to try it out.  Its basically a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but you brown your butter, then cool it, then make cookie dough with it! And, this recipe used M&Ms and pretzel pieces.  The were delicious.  As cool as pretzels and M&Ms were....I think plain ol' chocolate chips would be better. :)
I used the fake sunlight method to get these cookie shots.

Anyway, on a photography note:  I HAVE been taking pictures lately, on and off, just not blogging them.  :-/  Sorry about that!
A few exciting things...

I actually bought a tripod!  I always hear/see how you NEED a tripod. But hey, I get pretty good pictures, and I've never used a tripod.  But I found a video tripod, in its box!, at Goodwill for $10.  So I bought it.  It seems like a fairly nice tripod.   Using a tripod is much much different than just handheld...but its a new adventure, and good practice!

Another thing, I am taking Groomsmen-getting-ready photos for a wedding on Sunday, and also doing some photography for another friends wedding in May.  (Already doing one friend's wedding in May, now another!) So that's kinda neat.  Wedding photography isn't particularly one of my dreams in life, but I think I'll enjoy it, and its nice to help friends out, to make their special day a little bit better. :)

So, that's all for now; hopefully I'll be back soon, with some of the pictures from the last few weeks. :)

Getting pictures ready!

Well, a few weeks ago, I did a post about being invited to display some photos in a local Winter Photofest.  I looked at my photos, chose some I liked, did some editing, printed some, did some more editing, and printed the sizes I want.  Today I got all three of them framed and/or matted.  I am displaying one as a 4x6, one as a 5x7, and one as a 8x10.
I took a picture of the framed, matted 4x6 and the framed 8x10 so you can all see the finished product. :)

Cheerios!

Almost any small object can fascinate me, if I am taking pictures of the object.  :)  The other day, I was at a friends house, and we were taking pictures late, late at night, while we were eating cheerios.  Naturally...cheerios ended up in our photos.  I was explaining to her (a new photographer) about planes, and how focal points really often are really more like a focal plane.  I generally consider this shallow depth of field like focusing on a 'slice' of my 3-D setting.  So a 'slice' of my picture is in focus.  This changes depending on the angle you are coming from...
So here's a few random, fun, cheerio pictures my friend and I took.

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Winter Photo fest

I was invited to display three of my photos at the BrickStreet Market for their Winter Photo Fest. Here are the ones I am most likely going to choose from.  
Winter photos can show such beauty, yet they are often hard to capture. 

Well, I pretty much took this picture just to prove to myself that I can, in fact, take a beautiful photo of food.  I've done it before, and I am sure I'll do it again, but I was just feeling like I didn't put any energy or time into my photo of the day.  They were rushed and turning out dark, grainy, flashed, etc.  Well, lighting is key...mid morning gives such glorious light.  So, I took a bunch of pictures of the cake, and they turned out well.  I had fun styling it, and fussing with it, and standing on the counter top to take this picture... 

Now, about the cake...my siblings had fair judging last week.  Tuesday was food judging.  Which means Monday was food making day.  All day, lots of food.  Well due to various events, dear Paige, had to make THREE batches of this cake in order to get one 'just right' for the fair.  Of course, no one expects cakes to be PERFECT, but they can't be too small, or stick to the pan and fall half apart...well not if you want to win a blue ribbon!  (If you just want to eat it-not a problem!)  Needless to say, we had lots of chocolate chip pound cake with caramel frosting! yummm  I was happy....